Monday!

The day after a weekend from hell...well, I guess not really, but I certainly feel tired, unmotivated, and for some reason uninspired today. The kids are back in school, and I had a yard sale yesterday (in the cold, as fall weather has decided to arrive), and I couldn't be more exhausted from the whole experience. I certainly wish my son wasn't maxed out at full speed today, otherwise I might be able to squeeze in a nap!

I sat down with the first two sketches4all Sketch-a-thon layout sketches, one released on Saturday by our DT member Val and another released yesterday by our DT member Stacy. They are both fantastic layouts/examples, but as I sat there staring at both, trying to decide which to tackle first, I drew a blank. What's a girl to do when she can't overcome her scrapper's block? Well, I went through all of the challenges I had written down in my challenge notebook, looking for the first thing that jumped out at me. Then I went through my pile of pictures to be scrapped directly on my desk. A light bulb went off when I came across Challenge #14 from Sketches in Thyme and this pile of old Christmas pictures, the next page to be completed in my 10 year old daughter's album.

Here's the sketch:

and here's my take.

I wanted to incorporate the circles, but as my photos were bigger, I used them a little differently. I loved the shiny foil stars on the MAMBI paper, so of course I *had* to cut out the star on the upper strip of MAMBI flocked paper, so that it wouldn't be hidden behind the strip. I then used a star punch to punch stars out of sheet metal. My Dymo label writer made the name strips, and the title (cut out of random paper from my stash) is adhered with foam squares for added dimension. Journaling reads: "Hanging out with Honey's giant, animated Santa at the annual ornament swap, Christmas '06." (Two things you should know if you don't know me: 1>Honey is what my kids call my mom instead of grandma or nana 2>I am actually that far behind in the kids' albums. My son is off-the-wall active, and I don't get the opportunity to sit down in the craft room.)

Now, let's see if I can go knock another couple of layouts off of my list :)